Keeper of the Flame Read online

  “Stop him, Crang!” Sal shouted. She was barely through the living room door, running and spitting at the same time.

  Stop who?

  Sal was first into the hall, Franny right on her heels, and three or four long steps back was Lex. Sal flew past me, then Franny at such a clip she dropped a blue sock and didn’t bother to break momentum long enough to get it back.

  Lex wore an angry expression and nothing else. Judging from the red swelling around his bare groin, someone had kicked him in the crotch. No wonder he looked pissed off.

  “Crang!” Sal screamed, still in full flight, glancing back. “Do something!”

  I pulled out my cellphone. By then, I was backpedalling like a mad man to keep a space between me and the hard-charging Lex.

  Holding the cell in the camera position, I snapped pictures of the naked idiot.

  He kept coming at me, still determined to get past me to the girls who were now almost at the front door. I didn’t think Lex had yet caught on that I was photographing him in a state no man would want recorded.

  Finally Lex got the point of my picture-taking. That flummoxed him. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. First, he lowered both to cover his crotch, then he raised one to block his face from the camera. Lex was a man in confusion. He stopped running. He seemed to forget the girls. For a second or two, his anger had nowhere to go. The indecision didn’t last long. He shifted his temper tantrum to me. He lunged forward and swung his right fist in my general direction. It was a lousy punch. I made an easy move to let his fist slip by. Lex lost his balance. I turned and was through the open front door before he straightened up.

  I sprinted down the front walk to the sidewalk. Looking over my shoulder, I saw no sign of Lex. He must have given up pursuit of the girls and me. Maybe the earlier kick to the gonads had zapped his energy.

  I slowed down to a trot, and caught up to the girls just as they reached Sal’s Volvo. Both of them were still nude except for the thongs, still clutching the rest of their clothes to their breasts. I said I’d drive. Sal managed to flip me the keys, and both girls climbed into the back seat. I drove down the winding street, not stopping until I reached a pond at the bottom of the hill. I pulled over and parked.

  By then, both girls were dressed.

  “I lost a sock,” Franny said.

  “Franny,” Sal said to her, “it’s not like we’re going back for the sake of one damn sock.”

  “It’s my favourite shade of blue.”

  Sal reached over to cup Franny’s chin. “But, listen, thanks for kicking old Lex in the nuts.”

  “Franny did that?” I said. “She’s the one responsible for all the red swelling around his privates?”

  “That’s my girl,” Sal said.

  “What brought it all on?” I asked. “Lex tried for the forbidden move?”

  “A blow job!” Sal said. “He tried to stick his penis in my mouth! Even just a taste of it was disgusting. And, my god, humiliating!”

  “His real name’s Anin Mahuda,” I said. “The guy who calls himself Lex.”

  My news brought Sal to a brief pause.

  “Crang,” she said, “are you telling me and Franny that for everything the two of us went through, this is all you learned? The idiot’s name?”

  “Freddie Chamblis doesn’t own the mansion,” I said. “Roger Carnale does.”

  “Who’s Roger Carnale?” Franny said.

  “Flame’s manager,” Sal said.

  “The singer?” Franny said. “Oh wow, I love Flame’s voice.”

  “Roger’s probably the tall, well-dressed, polite, servant type guy you ladies have talked about,” I said. “The one you said dropped into the video shoots now and then.”

  “Why didn’t somebody tell me who he was?” Franny said. “I’d freak to meet Flame.”

  “So the day was worthwhile for you, Crang?” Sal said.

  “Something funny’s going on with Carnale’s finances,” I said.

  “That’s helpful in what way?”

  “Always follow the money,” I said. “That’s what somebody mixed up in the Watergate scandal once said. That’s my new plan with the Flame situation.”

  “What’s the Watergate scandal?” Franny asked.

  “It’s totally old-timey,” Sal said to Franny. “Crang’s majorly big on old-timey stuff.”

  “Following the money makes sense as an investigative technique in any era,” I said.

  Sal looked at me as if she had another question. But she didn’t ask it.

  “I need to get home for a shower,” she said.

  I drove a block down to Queen Street, turned right, and pointed toward Lake Shore Boulevard.

  “Crang,” Franny said after awhile, “can you introduce me to Flame sometime after you’ve finished whatever job it is you’re doing for him?”

  “Be my honour, Franny.”

  I left the girls and the Volvo at Sal’s condo, and walked home.

  Follow the money? It wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I was still in bed next morning, awake but not alert, when my cell signaled a long-distance call coming in. The bedside clock said 7:20. If Annie was phoning from Los Angeles, it would be 4:20 a.m. where she was. Ergo, the caller couldn’t be Annie. The screen on my cell read “Hotel Bel-Air.” Would the Ellen DeGeneres people put Annie up at a super chic place like the Bel-Air? Kingsmill, the accountant, said Roger Carnale was in Los Angeles. He was a guy more likely to book himself into the Bel-Air, whether his finances were shaky or not.

  I answered the phone in a noncommittal tone of voice.

  “Sweetie,” Annie said, “you’ll never guess what’s happening out here.”

  “At this time of morning,” I said, “nothing should be happening in Los Angeles.”

  “I flew in on the red-eye,” Annie said. “Now I know why they call it that. My eyes look like a couple of tiny ball bearings except mine are pink, not silver. Also my sense of time is shot.”

  “But something’s still happening?”

  “Jerome’s leading a small revolt of the troops against Carnale.”

  “What troops are there besides Jerome?”

  “You’re right, there’s only one other,” Annie said. “But he’s crucial.”

  “Somebody I’ve never heard of?”

  “Flame himself. Jerome’s trying to line him up on the rebel side against Carnale. Nothing’s set in stone, but it’s the first time someone’s even suggested Flame should question Carnale’s way of doing business.”

  I made a whistling sound. “And the showdown’s out there today?”

  “They’re going to meet with people from the movie company. That’s when Jerome is set to make his pitch. Everybody’s supposed to be in Los Angeles. Jerome’s asking for something like a piece of artistic control over the movie.”

  “You think he has a shot at getting it?”

  “One thing is for sure, Jerome’s become much more realistic about the movie’s budget.”

  “As evidenced by what?”

  “Instead of Scarlett Johansson, he’s lobbying for one of those English actresses who do an American accent like they were born and bred in upper New York State. I forget this girl’s name, but she comes way cheaper than Scarlett, and she’s got the chops.”

  “So now there’s going to be a sit-down in Hollywood about all of this,” I said. “My source tells me Roger has already hopped to the coast.”

  “And your source in this instance is who?”

  I couldn’t just tell Annie that the guy who brought me up to date on Carnale’s travel schedule was Arthur Kingsmill, the accountant. She’d be motivated to ask a ton more questions about when and why I got on to Kingsmill, and all the rest of the tale. My immediate reaction was to get out front on the whole deal, and tell her o
n my own the entire story of the weekend’s events. Not the part about the tussle on the roof with Freddie Chamblis, but everything else, especially the scene at the porn mansion which turned out not to be Chamblis’s property but was, instead, Roger Carnale’s. I got going, and talked for ten minutes straight.

  “This means you’ve liberated Sal and her friend from the clutches of the pornography business?” Annie said when I finished.

  “In effect.”

  “Now the only person you need to free up from the whole mess is yourself.”

  I skipped past Annie’s remark. “Kingsmill,” I said, “left me with the impression Carnale might be wanting for bucks.”

  “Maybe that’s why Jerome thinks Carnale is likely to sit still while Jerome takes his run at Carnale’s authority, if you can follow that thicket of my thinking,” Annie said. “Normally, I gather Carnale would have popped a gasket at the temerity.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” I said.

  “Usually I need to pry this kind of stuff out of you,” Annie said. “Thanks for sharing, sweetie.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “But from what you said, you’re not any closer to figuring out who killed the Reverend.”

  “I’m not as keen on Freddie Chamblis as the murderer, not like I was yesterday.”

  “Leave it to the police. It’s their job, not yours.”

  Annie’s voice sounded to me like it had run out of gas, and I told her so.

  “I think I’m likely to be here three more nights,” she said, pushing past the fatigue. “There’s some rescheduling needed for my item with Ellen.”

  “Not because they’re having second thoughts about the value of Edward Everett Horton as an attraction for Ellen’s audience?”

  “Just the reverse,” Annie said. “It’s because they’re juicing the item up to a thing where Ellen and I exchange our own versions of Edward Everett’s double takes.”

  “The way you did it solo at the book launch?”

  “That’s where the show got the idea. Someone who was at the launch told them I had a rubber face.”

  “In this case, it’s a compliment.”

  “I took it as such,” Annie said.

  “You got the double-take routine routine down pat, sweetie,” I said. “You can relax on that score.”

  “Relaxing is what I need to do right now, this very minute,” Annie said, her voice falling away to practically zero. “Rest my little pink eyes.”

  A moment or two later, I hung up, but I had the feeling Annie might already be zoned out on her phone.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Wally Crawford, ace homicide detective, had told me to meet him at ten that morning on the bench, next to what he called “the brick-laying chick.” I knew he was talking about the sculpture outside police headquarters on College Street. The sculpture had baffled me from the time it was installed a few years earlier. It showed a life-sized female cop in full gear — a handgun holster on her left hip, cellphone, or maybe it was an old-time walkie talkie, baton, the whole set up. But the woman’s right hand was lifting a small trowel of cement that she was applying to a wall of stone blocks. It was symbolic as all get-out, but the symbolism seemed forced to me.

  I sat studying the thing for about five minutes before Wally walked out of police headquarters.

  “Let’s go for coffee,” he said.

  “You can’t stand the sculpture either?” I asked, still looking at the brick-laying chick.

  “That’s why we’re going to Second Cup,” Wally said. “So I don’t have to listen while you analyze the thing.”

  The local Second Cup was on College, a few steps past Bay Street on the west side. Cops liked to go there because it was handy and reasonably quiet. Wally and I picked up cups of coffee at the counter, large for him, small for me. We sat in a booth next to the window.

  Wally pulled a package of fifty or sixty pages from a large white envelope.

  “Interim report from Forensics on the murder of the Reverend Alton Douglas,” Wally said. “The final report won’t be much different.”

  “What’s it say about the murder weapon?” I asked.

  Wally leaned across the table. “You’re asking a question before I even get started?” he said. “For crissake, Crang, I’m not supposed to show you anything in the Reverend’s file, but here I am, and already you’re making demands.”

  “And don’t think I’m not grateful, Wally.”

  “But overanxious.”

  “Let’s just say I’m keen.”

  “The reason I’m sharing information with you is I think you’ve got ideas about the killer’s identity.”

  “You’re not wrong there, Wally.”

  “In addition to that, you might even divulge some ideas to me.”

  “I like your choice of determiners, Wally. Some ideas.”

  “In grade school, when I went, the teachers said ‘some’ was a pronoun.”

  “It still can be, but nowadays, in the way you used it, they call it a determiner.”

  “Whatever, you won’t share all your ideas with me. Just some. Am I right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Okay,” Wally said, flipping through the first dozen pages of the pile in his hand, “a single blow ended the Reverend’s life. The killer swung a blunt object as he faced the victim. The object connected with the Reverend’s left ear and kept going into his skull. On the way, it hit what’s called the middle meningeal artery. That caused bleeding from a high pressure system, something you get in just 1 to 3 percent of cases. It happened in this one. We’re talking about a catastrophic brain injury. That could have killed him, but he also could have suffered a cardiac death resulting from lack of oxygen. Take your pick. The Reverend was lying in his office dying and dead, mostly dead by far, for a while. All of it resulting from just one blow to the poor sucker’s head.”

  “Whatever he’d done in his life,” I said, “the Reverend didn’t deserve that kind of suffering.”

  “Not a lot of actual suffering when you think about it in numerical terms.”

  “From the time he saw the perpetrator swing the blunt object until the object knocked him unconscious — what would that be? Two or three seconds?”

  “Maybe quicker,” Wally said. “But does any of this measuring of time make us feel better for the Reverend?”

  “Not much.”

  “Maybe we should stick to business.”

  “For example,” I said, “what do the Forensics people say about time of death?”

  Wally didn’t need to look at the papers in his hand to answer. “Not earlier than 10 p.m., not later than midnight. Most likely closer to the latter.”

  “That’s last Tuesday night, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “What time did the barista kid discover the body Wednesday morning?”

  “Not that the time particularly matters to your detecting, but it was around 9:15 a.m.”

  Wally flipped through more of the papers in his hand.

  “Are we getting to an extremely crucial detail?” I asked. “The blunt object that did all the damage?”

  “This is the hard part,” Wally said. “In more ways than one.”

  “What have you got?”

  “The blunt object in question was primarily metal in makeup.”

  “Primarily?”

  “Overwhelmingly,” Wally said. “But there were traces of fabric mixed with the metal.”

  “Like what, the cloth was knitted or weaved into the metal somehow? Or around the metal? Is semantics the problem here?”

  “Crang,” Wally said, looking at me in a steely-eyed way, “I get the feeling semantics is always a problem with you.”

  “Can you simplify things for me? Is that asking too much?”

  “The
guys in Forensics say it was leather among the metal.”

  “That’s the so-called fabric?”

  “Leather is a chemically treated animal skin.”

  “I get it,” I said. “Your Forensics experts detected the presence of the chemicals, which is how they could tell it was leather.”

  Wally checked through the last pages in the bundle from Forensics.

  “All that’s left of importance,” he said, “is the shape of the blunt object.”

  “What’s the shape?”

  “Would you for chrissake wait until I finish what I’m saying?”

  “Sorry, Wally. I seem to be in an eager frame of mind this morning.”

  “It’s annoying the hell out of me,” Wally said. He had slowed his delivery, either to tune me in to the deliberateness of his cadence or just to pay me back for irritating him.

  “The killing object appears to have a straight line in its shape, you follow me? It wasn’t a baseball bat or anything else that had entirely rounded contours. It would be shaped in more of a rectangular form.”

  “Like a two-by-four maybe?”

  Wally shook his head. “There were no traces of wood in the head wound.”

  “Just indications of metal and a hint of leather, and the metal wasn’t rounded. It was more like a bar in shape.”

  “You got it,” Wally said. “And that’s all you get.”

  He slid the sheets of paper back into the large white envelope.

  “Now,” Wally said, folding his hands on the table. “There’s something I’d like you to get for me.”

  “A solution to the Reverend’s murder. Right, I’m on it, Wally.”

  Wally shook his head. “Much easier than that.”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to ask your client to put something nice on each of my daughters’ Facebook pages,” Wally said. He took a card from his wallet. “On here, I’ve written their particulars, Fleur and Sandrine. Ask him, does he mind making each one different. So Fleur’s isn’t the same as Sandrine’s and vice versa. You understand what I’m saying?”